MuTable (Music Table): Turn any surface into musical instrument

TL;DR

MuTable transforms any flat surface into a real-time musical instrument using projection and sensors, offering an affordable and intuitive way to play various instruments without specialized hardware.

Contribution

We introduce MuTable, a low-cost system that converts any surface into a musical instrument through projection, calibration, and tap detection, enabling accessible interactive musical experiences.

Findings

83% accuracy in detecting softer taps

100% accuracy in detecting regular taps

95.7% precision in hand location estimation

Abstract

With the rise in pervasive computing solutions, interactive surfaces have gained a large popularity across multi-application domains including smart boards for education, touch-enabled kiosks for smart retail and smart mirrors for smart homes. Despite the increased popularity of such interactive surfaces, existing platforms are mostly limited to custom built surfaces with attached sensors and hardware, that are expensive and require complicated design considerations. To address this, we design a low-cost, intuitive system called MuTable that repurposes any flat surface (such as table tops) into a live musical instrument. This provides a unique, close to real-time instrument playing experience to the user to play any type of musical instrument. This is achieved by projecting the instrument's shape on any tangible surface, sensor calibration, user taps detection, tap position identification, and associated sound generation. We demonstrate the performance of our working system by reporting an accuracy of 83% for detecting softer taps, 100% accuracy for detecting the regular taps, and a precision of 95.7% for estimating hand location.